The present invention relates to a method of changing strip material on a production machine.
The present invention may be applied to advantage to packing machines in general, and to cigarette packing machines in particular, to which the following description refers purely by way of example.
For special purposes, such as the formation of collars or internal reinforcing elements of hinged-lid packets, cigarette packing machines employ relatively rigid strip material normally fed off a reel.
When a reel of said strip material runs out, the machine is normally stopped, and the runout reel is replaced with a new reel, the leading end of the strip of which is connected manually by the operator to the trailing end of the runout strip.
Such a system obviously involves considerable downtime and constant supervision by an operator of each packing machine.
To overcome the above drawback, a method, described and illustrated in Italian Patent Application n. 3426A/90, has been proposed enabling the runout reel to be replaced automatically with a new reel.
Though highly effective, implementation of the above known method requires a relatively large-size automatic device in turn requiring relatively accurate adjustment for it to operate correctly.